Description: The Cottingley Fairies Photograph, "Alice and the Leaping Fairy". This delightful antique sepia photograph is reprinted on high quality, archival photographic paper. The print dimensions are 5" x 7", with a white border to enable easy, off the shelf framing. The Story of The Cottingley FairiesThe story of the Cottingley Fairies, one of the greatest photographic hoaxes of all time, is now over a century old, but continues to capture the public's imagination with new books about the subject still being published. The first two photographs were taken in July and September 1917 by 16-year-old Elsie Wright (1901-1988) and her cousin 9-year-old Frances Griffiths (1907-1986), in the village of Cottingley, near Bingley in Yorkshire, England. The two girls, like so many children then and now, believed in fairies and set out to prove their existence, little knowing that their practical joke would stir such controversy and fool such eminent figures as Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Borrowing Elsie’s father’s 'Midg' quarter-plate camera, and with the use of coloured paper cut-outs and hat pins they staged their scenes near the stream at the end of Elsie’s garden, first showing Frances with four dancing fairies, and then, two months later, Elsie seated with an eighteen-inch tall dancing gnome. The resultant photographic prints that an incredulous Arthur made from the glass plates were circulated in small numbers to family, neighbours and friends, but soon after were forgotten as the war ended and the girls grew up and parted from living in the same house.While Elsie’s father, Arthur Wright, a keen amateur photographer who developed the prints, never doubted they were fakes, his wife Polly was a believer and in late 1919 she showed them to members of the Theosophical Society in Bradford where they were giving a lecture on fairy life. From there things spiralled out of control, first through the enthusiastic belief of leading society member Edward Gardner, who used photography expert Harold Snelling to produce 'enhanced' photographic prints of them to be sold at Gardner’s theosophical lectures in 1920. It was in the spring of 1920 that Conan Doyle, a committed and leading spiritualist believer, became aware of the photographs who, having liaised with Gardner and become sure of their authenticity, then wanted to use them for an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for The Strand Magazine. Gardner and Doyle sought further expert opinions from the photographic companies, while Gardner met the Wright family and organised two 'Cameo' quarter-plate cameras and 24 plates for the girls to try and capture more photographs of the fairies. During the wet August of 1920 the youngsters managed to ‘capture’ three more images of themselves with fairies.Following the publication of Conan Doyle’s article a great public controversy raged with leading scientists and writers voicing their opinions in support of and against the truthfulness of the photographs. The story has reverberated intermittently ever since, in both print and on film, and is considered one of the most bizarre and successful photographic hoaxes of the last century. It was only in the 1980s that Geoffrey Crawley, a photographic expert and journalist for BJP (British Journal of Photography) was able to debunk the hoax in a series of articles with both Elsie and Frances finally confessing. However, they insisted that they had seen the fairies, and did take one final photograph which they insisted was real.
Price: 12.95 USD
Location: Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania
End Time: 2025-01-18T22:31:34.000Z
Shipping Cost: N/A USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 14 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Type: Photograph
Size: 5 x 7 in
Image Color: Sepia
Theme: Fairies
